It's great to have an explanation

[Rorschach]

Now straight off let me state that, while considering environmental and psychological aetiology (i.e. causes) as crucial to mental illness, I am not unaware of neuropsychiatric models. Let me also state that this thread is not about a blame game. However that said I feel I am drawn to question the almost religious devotion to the biomedical model. I know that in my case it has allowed people to explain away difficult situations, to blame the illness. Not only does it allow people close to patients an explanation to difficulties faced with loved one, it attributes anything you want 'to the illness'. My mom had a tendency to 'blame' everything on my illness; it allows her to gloss over deep rooted difficulties in our family. The scheme is to get everyone to buy into that explanation and allow people to move on, start afresh, nobody is too blame, bla bla bla.

Freud is quite an odd fellow and I don't buy into everything he says. There is however one cognitive hypothesis that seems so simple in its truth. It's called 'Gedankenschreck' which roughly translates as 'fear of thinking'. Contextually it means that people are scared of the hard questions, of psychological insight, of facing a truth, so in response they dress up a lie in acceptable clothing.

Tuppence.

 

[Dollit]

I don't think that this just stops with mental health issues, I think it's an infestation in our whole lives. Had a similar discussion over the past few days with someone. It's easier to hide behind a lie than face the truth about anything.

 

[Rorschach]

The thing is that’s fine in most situations, it’s almost a functional response. The question arises in therapy tho', what is the purpose of the whole of mental health services? To heal a patient? To combat deviancy? To serve as state mechanism?

If we are dealing with the holistic well being of people suffering from a condition, which is the 'copy' we're sold, then in the context of a person's mental well being it’s just not on.

If that's what it is, it's nothing more than an elaborate con-trick.

 

[Dollit]

If we accept that attitude as fine in most situations then by default people will accept is as acceptable in the ones where it's clearly not. We need to learn that you don't have to get into a box to think - that thinking outside the box is best.

The purpose of mental health services as I see them are to get me into a position where I can function to my best, whatever my best is given the circumstances. I'm never going to get back to work but I can still do meaningful voluntary work. I don't have to accept less. I have an enlightened consultant who constantly feeds back to and from his list into the system. Subsequently our treatment from him is holistic and his waiting list is a mile long.

 

[Rorschach]

Then you're in a minority, because it's the exception rather than the rule.

 

[Ashami]

If we are dealing with the holistic well being of people suffering from a condition, which is the 'copy' we're sold, then in the context of a person's mental well being it’s just not on.

If that's what it is, it's nothing more than an elaborate con-trick.

Yes but we are not, generally speaking, dealing with the holistic well being of people, are we? On the whole I believe the medical profession approaches mental health issues from a scientific, metabolic, chemical point of view, in the belief that we are skin and bone, brain and nervous system. If it was general practice to treat the 'whole' patient then our therapy would involve Mind, Body and Spirit. I've never had therapy on NHS that has treated the spirit and quite frankly, their approach to treatment of my mind was positively barbarian.

Mental Health conditions are symptoms, like broken bones are symptoms of a fall. Fixing the broken bones is the first step but working out why we fall teaches us how to avoid falling again...

I feel that when people around you begin to put everything down to the 'illness' it's fear, fear that discussing why we fall will bring up uncomfortable stuff they themselves dont want to face. Perhaps they dont want to learn why they fell?

 

[Rorschach]

I feel that when people around you begin to put everything down to the 'illness' it's fear, fear that discussing why we fall will bring up uncomfortable stuff they themselves dont want to face. Perhaps they dont want to learn why they fell?

Yep that's the feeling I get...

 

[Dollit]

I fully appreciate that and wish that there was more enlightenment. We often want to kick back against the system but don't know how or where to start. How to you challenge a system that won't hear you? Are they frightened that the lunatics will take over the asylum if thinking is allowed?

 

[Dollit]

Sorry Ashami - I posted the same time as you did.

Again my trail blazer encourages me to meditate and when I told him of how I'd used crystals and been freed from hypnophobia he just said "don't knock it, don't try to understand, just keep doing it".

 

[Rorschach]

Well I suppose I have the next best thing to a trailblazer; I've been signed off from hospital, so no dealing with shrinks anymore.

 

[Dollit]

Wow! Well done to you - this is really your year, job and getting signed off from the hospital! Good for you. xx

 

[Rorschach]

Wow! Well done to you - this is really your year, job and getting signed off from the hospital! Good for you. xx

To be honest they didn't have a choice, it was a clear case of institutional 'Gedankenschreck'...but I suppose it suits me. Now the GP can throw pills at me, after all I've picked up my script from him for years. Suppose it means they don't have to deal with the issues I raised.

 

[Apotheosis]

'Gedankenschreck' is now at epic & biblical proportions within our societies. We are in the age of Gedankenschreck, in fact. We need a cull of the species if we are ever going to survive it.

Good to see you posting again Rorschach.

 

[lucid scream]

something someone told me that helped me accept my diagnosis and choose to remain medicated, and i believe you backed it up, Rorschach, was 'the meds arent necessarily for you. they're often for the people who love you.' meaning that we can be very hard to deal with at times, and being medicated allows those who are with us live with us in some semblance of normalcy. maybe the entire diagnosis is the same way?
people are often self-conscious about the folks in thier lives, and when one person is having constant mood swings and paranoia, blaming others for various wrongs that may or may not be true, well, it hurts, right? it hurts to see someone we love going through so much pain. and it hurts to be accused of causing it.
so, your right, the diagnosis allows folks to say to themselves 'its ok, this person can't help it, they're sick' and shrug off our behaviour. the meds keep us from misbehaving in the first place. depending on where the mental patients actions are coming from, this can be good or bad, or good and bad.

 

[Rorschach]

something someone told me that helped me accept my diagnosis and choose to remain medicated, and i believe you backed it up, Rorschach, was 'the meds arent necessarily for you. they're often for the people who love you.' meaning that we can be very hard to deal with at times, and being medicated allows those who are with us live with us in some semblance of normalcy. maybe the entire diagnosis is the same way?
people are often self-conscious about the folks in thier lives, and when one person is having constant mood swings and paranoia, blaming others for various wrongs that may or may not be true, well, it hurts, right? it hurts to see someone we love going through so much pain. and it hurts to be accused of causing it.
so, your right, the diagnosis allows folks to say to themselves 'its ok, this person can't help it, they're sick' and shrug off our behaviour. the meds keep us from misbehaving in the first place. depending on where the mental patients actions are coming from, this can be good or bad, or good and bad.

I'm not knocking things getting better, I'm just not sold on coercion, denial, and like I said an almost religious zeal surrounding the biomedical model. Personally I take my pills religiously, but why I take them, why people (close or fleeting) want me to take them, and why the doctor prescribes them are pretty much all for different rationale.

Like I said my life has improved through a bit of insight and thinking 'let's try keeping to the pills', I just don't like the con tricks that are used as coercion/pressure/compulsion and/or a healthy slab of emotional blackmail.